The Sex Appeal Competition

[N]early three-quarters of the women’s coverage was devoted to gymnastics, swimming, diving and beach volleyball. Notice anything they have in common? The researchers did. "It is now customary for the participants in all of these events … to wear the equivalent of a bathing suit," they note in their analysis, which appears in the journal Electronic News.

Track and field, where the clothing is almost as minimal, made up another 13 percent of the women’s prime-time coverage. "The remaining sports represented—rowing, cycling, and fencing—are not, by traditional standards, ‘socially acceptable’ sports for women, and make up approximately 2 percent of coverage," the researchers write.